Margaret and Bill Sebastian keep watch over the city of Brandenburg.
They lie at the top of the hill in St George Cemetery, prominently overlooking the town of Brandenburg and the surrounding countryside as it softly rolls down to the Ohio River.
Family legend has it that Bill Sebastian, while a sheriff in Brandenburg, shot Jesse James in the leg and knocked out his front teeth.1 I heard this story many times during my growing up and adult years. Despite the incredulous nature of the story, it had a consistency in its telling that made it somewhat believable. And, as with most oral histories, it had more than a kernel of truth.
Bill Sebastian was born in 1840 to Benjamin Sebastian and Katherine Anderson. He was the brother of my great-great grandmother, Mary Ellen (Sebastian) Board, who was the maternal grandmother of my grandfather, Orion Lee Starks. This story is handed down through Orion, as the only living relative of 'Uncle Bill and Aunt Mag' Sebastian.
Orion Starks was born in 1896, and went almost immediately to live with the Sebastian's. Because his mother, Alice Belle (Board) Starks, had contracted TB sometime before his birth, he was sent to live with Aunt Mag and Uncle Bill, who were childless. In 1898, Alice Starks finally succumbed to the illness and died. The cause of death was listed as 'Consumption.' Orion continued to live with the Sebastian's in their home on Old State Road until he was nine or ten years old, and then went to live with his father, stepmother and two brothers. (Consumption was the common name at that time for pulmonary tuberculosis.)
Orion's wife, my grandmother Mary Nancy Starks, describes Bill Sebastian as a short, thin man who was stout of heart and loved to fight. And he had the brass knuckles and pistol to prove it, which were handed down to Orion as his only living relative.
During my first visit to Brandenburg in 2002, I went to the Sebastian homestead where my grandfather Orion grew up.2 I was told there that "Yes, indeed, Jesse James had been in Brandenburg." According to the oral history of the town, Jesse James visited at least once, and stayed in the downtown hotel, or even possibly in the home of the Sebastian's (though my research makes that seem doubtful.) So there very well could have been a shootout with the James gang!! This information spurred me to action.
The first question that arose was "why would Jesse James be in a small river town like Brandenburg at all?" I researched the James brothers and studied their entire life history,3 and it seems that Jesse Woodson James (1847-1882) and Alexander Franklin James (1843-1915), although born in Missouri, had many ties to Kentucky.
Their mother, Zerelda Cole, was born in Woodford, KY and attended Georgetown College before marrying Robert James in 1841 near Stamping Ground, KY. Their father, Robert James, was a preacher from Logan, KY, and had several relatives living in the Logan County/Bardstown area. The farms of these relatives were places of refuge for the James brothers, and figure in somewhat to the Brandenburg story. 4
Why was there so much fuss about Jesse James? According to historian/author T.J. Stiles, Jesse James was the most written about and talked about outlaw of the latter 19th century. Jesse was as notorious in his day as Osama bin Laden is today, and for much the same reasons. As a teenager, from age 16 on, he was a guerilla fighter and terrorist under William Quantrill, and participated in some of the most brutal and savage killings in the Missouri and Kansas Border Wars. According to Stiles in his book Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War:
Frank and Jesse James were household names long before America's Most Wanted became a hit show. For two decades after the Civil War, they were hunted by hundreds who accused them of every bank and train robbery in the Midwest. They originally had trained as guerrilla fighters in the border conflict between Kansas and Missouri both before and during the Civil War. After the war, they joined up with the Younger brothers (Cole Younger and later Jim and Bob Younger) in Feb, 1866 to rob a bank in Liberty, Missouri. (Stiles)5
Jesse was especially loved (and much hated) by people in Clay County, Missouri, where he was born and raised, because he was a guerilla fighter who murdered and terrorized his neighbors both during and after the Civil War.
Long after the war, especially during the 1870's, he became a political hero to many -- the last vestige of the Lost South, fighting to preserve all things that made the South "Southern," particularly slavery and the life of Southern Gentility6. But eventually, Jesse's exploits were driven as much by political issues as by the need (or greed) for money.
To summarize Jesse James career, he was a guerilla fighter who murdered and terrorized many; a robber who participated in holdups of astounding boldness and daring; and ultimately a symbolic hero in the cause of the South during Reconstruction (1865-1877). In 1882 he was shot in the back of the head and killed by a member of his own gang. Jesse James was 34 years old when he died. He had married his first cousin, Zerelda Mimms, in 1875, and his two children, who had always grown up by the name of Edwards, did not know until the crowd gathered who their father really was. In fact Jesse Edwards, age 8, protested that his father's name was not Jesse James until quieted by his mother.
Several books confirm that Jesse was indeed in Kentucky many times between 1860 and 1880. Kentucky was a perfect place for the James gang to hide out because it was a sympathetic, Confederate-leaning border state, and very hospitable toward former southern guerilla fighters like the James brothers.7 We do know that Jesse and his brother, along with their gang, thanked Kentucky for its hospitality by committing at least three robberies in the state.
The first actual reference I found that Jesse James had been in Brandenburg was at the end of a book on the history of early Meade County, Kentucky by the Rev. George Ridenour. In the 'Afterword' he wrote:
This story teller will continue to relate the events of the early days-of soldiers, steamboats, picnics, race courses and political gatherings. Uncle Tabby Jackson still regales his hearers with an account of the time when Jesse James and his band shot their way to freedom at Brandenburg. Others tell of the Hill Grove men who made a bloodless night attack upon the federal garrison on East Hill during the Civil War. But these pages are about the "Early Times" in Meade County, Kentucky.8
Ultimately, I was able to find a description of the Brandenburg incident in the book The Rise and Fall of Jesse James by Robertus Love. Love, a newspaperman, wrote the book based on his own research and conversations with Frank James, who died in 1915. Although it was published in 1925, forty-two years after Jesse James death, Love did have the advantage of being able to interview those still alive who had witnessed many of the events. Love writes:
"Jesse took refuge with relatives in Kentucky. Frank James is said to have been in that state at the time, not having returned to Missouri with the other survivors of Quantrill's men who invaded the Dark and Bloody Ground and made it still more bloody early in 1865.9 Frank is said to have ridden into the Kentucky town of Brandenburg, some months before the Liberty bank robbery, and to have been sitting in the office of a small hotel when several members of a law and order committee entered and told him to consider himself under arrest as a horse thief. Much outlawry had followed the war in that region.
The story goes that Frank responded by opening fire on the vigilantes, wounding two or three of them, and that one of them shot him through the thigh. His wound is said to have kept him confined to bed for some months in the home of a friend many miles from Brandenburg, to which refuge he rode after shooting his way through the party that tried to arrest him.
The James's had many family connections in Logan and Nelson Counties, and those two sections of Kentucky became far-outlying provinces of the Jesse James country for many years to come".10
The Civil War ended in April 1865, beginning with General Lee's surrender at Appomattox, VA. Frank James surrendered to Union forces three months later, July 1865; but Jesse was shot and wounded attempting to surrender, and therefore never did 'officially' surrender. The first robbery of the James gang was not until February of the following year, 1866, so we can assume the Brandenburg shootout occurred sometime between July and December, 1865.11
But why was Jesse and not Frank said to be at the Brandenburg Hotel? The James brothers did not gain their notoriety until the 1870's. If Robertus Love is correct about Frank being the one in Brandenburg, my suspicion is that, as their reputation grew, anyone from the James gang would eventually be associated with Jesse alone, the most notorious and famous of them because of his outgoing personality and his reckless daring. Frank was the more studious and thoughtful of the two, often staying in the background. And Jesse could have easily passed through Brandenburg on many occasions since the Ohio River was the easiest means of travel at that time.
So, it seems that there was indeed a shootout in Brandenburg, but it was with Frank, not Jesse. It would make sense that the telling of the story would grow in later years as the James brothers became more and more notorious and famous, ultimately making Jesse the one involved.
We may never know exactly what happened, but for one brief moment in time Brandenburg stood out as the place where "Jesse James and his band shot their way to freedom."
| William A. Sebastian, 1840-1928 | Uncle to Orion Starks |
| Margaret Ann Sebastian (nee Hill), 1848-1905 | Wife of Wm Sebastian |
| Katherine Sebastian (nee Anderson), 1811-1889 | Mother of Wm Sebastian |
| Mary Ellen Board (nee Sebastian), 1835-1895 | Sister to William Sebastian and Grandmother to Orion Starks |
| Zerelda Amanda James (nee Cole), 1825-1911 | Mother of Jesse James |
| Robert Sallee James, 1818-1850 | Father of Jesse James |
| Orion Lee Starks, 1896-1943 | Grandson of Mary Ellen Board |
| Mary Nancy Starks (nee Roberts), 1899-1993 | Wife of Orion |
| Alice Belle Starks (nee Board), 1867-1898 | Mother of Orion Starks |
Curry, Richard O., ed. Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment: The Border States During Reconstruction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
Hopkins, James F. A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1951.
Love, Robertus. The Rise and Fall of Jesse James. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995 (Originally pub. 1925).
Petrone, Gerard S. Judgment at Gallatin: The Trial of Frank James. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1998.
Settle, William A., Jr. Jesse James Was His Name, or, Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1977 (originally published 1966).
Stiles, T.J., Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. Vintage Books USA, 2003.
Yeatman, Ted P. Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the
Legend. Nashville: Cumberland House, 2001.
Contact:
Steve Starks, ATHS Member #2745
1561 Crestwood Lance
South Lafayette, Indiana 47909